Quick and dirty summary

The title summarizes the book well. Let everything that happens in your life, especially negative experiences, improve you.

Notebook for
The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
Holiday, Ryan
Citation (APA): Holiday, R. (2014). The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
Introduction
Highlight (yellow) - Page 8
“The Things which hurt,” Benjamin Franklin wrote, “instruct.”
PART I: PERCEPTION
Highlight (yellow) - RECOGNIZE YOUR POWER > Page 22
through our perception of events, we are complicit in the creation— as well as the destruction— of every one of our obstacles.
Highlight (yellow) - STEADY YOUR NERVES > Page 26
There is always a countermove, always an escape or a way through, so there is no reason to get worked up. No one said it would be easy and, of course, the stakes are high, but the path is there for those ready to take it.
Highlight (yellow) - CONTROL YOUR EMOTIONS > Page 30
If an emotion can’t change the condition or the situation you’re dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion.
Highlight (yellow) - PRACTICE OBJECTIVITY > Page 33
In our own lives, how many problems seem to come from applying judgments to things we don’t control, as though there were a way they were supposed to be? How often do we see what we think is there or should be there, instead of what actually is there?
Highlight (yellow) - IS IT UP TO YOU? > Page 44
Focusing exclusively on what is in our power magnifies and enhances our power.
Highlight (yellow) - LIVE IN THE PRESENT MOMENT > Page 47
Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead. A business must take the operating constraints of the world around it as a given and work for whatever gains are possible. Those people with an entrepreneurial spirit are like animals, blessed to have no time and no ability to think about the ways things should be, or how they’d prefer them to be.
Highlight (yellow) - LIVE IN THE PRESENT MOMENT > Page 47
For all species other than us humans, things just are what they are. Our problem is that we’re always trying to figure out what things mean— why things are the way they are. As though the why matters. Emerson put it best: “We cannot spend the day in explanation.” Don’t waste time on false constructs.
Highlight (yellow) - LIVE IN THE PRESENT MOMENT > Page 48
Focus on what is in front of you, right now. Ignore what it “represents” or it “means” or “why it happened to you.”
Bookmark - THINK DIFFERENTLY > Page 49
Highlight (yellow) - THINK DIFFERENTLY > Page 49
Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind. There’s no other definition of it.
Highlight (yellow) - FINDING THE OPPORTUNITY > Page 53
A good person dyes events with his own color . . . and turns whatever happens to his own benefit.
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provide an instructive antilog— an example of whom you don’t want to become
PART II: ACTION
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We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out.
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We often assume that the world moves at our leisure. We delay when we should initiate. We jog when we should be running or, better yet, sprinting. And then we’re shocked— shocked!— when nothing big ever happens, when opportunities never show up, when new obstacles begin to pile up, or the enemies finally get their act together.
Highlight (yellow) - ITERATE > Page 86
Failure shows us the way— by showing us what isn’t the way.
Highlight (yellow) - DO YOUR JOB, DO IT RIGHT > Page 94
But you, you’re so busy thinking about the future, you don’t take any pride in the tasks you’re given right now. You just phone it all in, cash your paycheck, and dream of some higher station in life. Or you think, This is just a job, it isn’t who I am, it doesn’t matter. Foolishness. Everything we do matters— whether it’s making smoothies while you save up money or studying for the bar— even after you already achieved the success you sought. Everything is a chance to do and be your best. Only self- absorbed assholes think they are too good for whatever their current station requires.
Highlight (yellow) - DO YOUR JOB, DO IT RIGHT > Page 94
When action is our priority, vanity falls away.
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Respect the craft and make something beautiful.
Highlight (yellow) - DO YOUR JOB, DO IT RIGHT > Page 96
In every situation, life is asking us a question, and our actions are the answer. Our job is simply to answer well.
Highlight (yellow) - DO YOUR JOB, DO IT RIGHT > Page 97
Sure, the goal is important. But never forget that each individual instance matters, too— each is a snapshot of the whole. The whole isn’t certain, only the instances are.
Highlight (yellow) - WHAT’S RIGHT IS WHAT WORKS > Page 99
Not deploying the tactics you learned in school but adapting them to fit each and every situation.
PART III: WILL
Highlight (yellow) - ANTICIPATION (THINKING NEGATIVELY) > Page 142
Because the only variable we control completely is ourselves.
Highlight (yellow) - ANTICIPATION (THINKING NEGATIVELY) > Page 142
We’re like runners who train on hills or at altitude so they can beat the runners who expected the course would be flat.
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We are prepared for failure and ready for success.
Highlight (yellow) - LOVE EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS: AMOR FATI > Page 150
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it . . . but love it.
Highlight (yellow) - PERSEVERANCE > Page 157
Sitzfleisch. Staying power. Winning by sticking your ass to the seat and not leaving until after it’s over.
Highlight (yellow) - SOMETHING BIGGER THAN YOURSELF > Page 163
You must never lower yourself to being a person you don’t like.